An empirical study on the ceremonial adoption of ISO 9000 in Basque organizations

Abstract:
This paper tries to shed light on the ceremonial adoption of ISO 9000, one of the most prominent tools used within the Quality Management paradigm and one which has been linked to innovations of an organizational type in academic literature. For that purpose, extensive fieldwork based on both in-depth interviews of general managers, middle managers and employees, as well as on participant observation, was carried out in eight Basque organizations that have adopted the standard for a long period of time. The results show that companies tend to adopt ISO 9000 ceremonially influenced more by a number of internal organizational contingencies, than by pressures from the institutional environment.